


Against The Grain of Dystopic Claims

by nowseahare



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Machine Upgraded Connor | RK900, Unrequited Love, covering the bases fam, injured gavin, injured rk900
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 11:09:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16809439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowseahare/pseuds/nowseahare
Summary: “I love you, you idiot.” Gavin stared RK down, almost challengingly, his jaw set. “I’m in love with you.”RK felt the vague hum at the side of his head that meant his LED was spinning.“... I’m sorry. I don’t have anything in my program for reciprocating that feeling.”--------In which RK900 literally can’t deviate but maybe, just maybe, he can figure out a weirdass robot version of love instead. Gavin hasn’t received the memo that this is a romance story.





	Against The Grain of Dystopic Claims

**Author's Note:**

> Hello hello and welcome to this little love project of mine. I'm playing fast and loose with how RK900's robotness works, so... this will be an adventure. Just bear with me. It'll be really ooey gooey, I promise.

1.

Gavin Reed’s stress levels were above the universal average this evening, but honestly that wasn’t unusual for him.

He often hovered around the 40-60% range, a man quick to anger and always prickling with unknown energy. This was perhaps why he never sat down properly, and why he was always drumming his fingers on something or jiggling a leg. His biometrics indicated a probable undiagnosed anxiety disorder, exacerbated by an unhealthy intake of caffeine. But this was no tragedy. This was simply Gavin Reed’s state of being, and he plowed through it with a mean grin and absolutely no room for sympathy.

Tonight, however, seemed different.

Mostly because Gavin was glaring at him.

“Is something wrong?” RK900 asked.

Gavin sucked his teeth, and narrowed his eyes further. He was leaning against the side of their parked squad car, holding a cigarette (another stimulant, RK noted) and generally looking pinched together and irritable in his leather jacket. There was gray snow slush on his boots. It was an equally gray evening, still and cold, and Gavin’s breath was just as visible as his smoke. RK’s breath was not. It was not as heated.

“I already know the answer, of course,” RK clarified. “But I was hoping bringing it up would make you realize you’re being childish.”

“Okay, _smartass_.”

Gavin flicked his only half-smoked cigarette away into the snow, a comically aggressive gesture that RK knew would only necessitate a different cigarette in approximately 3 minutes. RK internally set a timer, for the sake of curiosity.

In the same motion, Gavin turned on him, his glare dagger-sharp, his nostrils flaring. He stormed forward the two steps it took to get into RK’s space.

There had been a time this may have predicated violence, but in the past year and a half Gavin’s outbursts had been dwindling steadily. Particularly against androids. For awhile after the Revolution his anger had flared even brighter, edged with the desperation of a man unable to fully comprehend the evils he’d committed. Then, he simply broke. The anger that remained was a pitiful ghost of what it once was, still tumultuous but half-assed, its real target almost always Gavin himself. RK, as Gavin’s partner, understood this better than most. In other words, he knew better than to be intimidated here.

And besides. He could take Gavin Reed. That had been true since the beginning.

Gavin was perfectly aware of this as well, his sneer edged with a grimace, almost like chagrin.

“What?” RK prompted.

Gavin pressed a finger up under RK’s chin, right where his neck began beneath the line of his jaw. The synthetic flesh was tender there. If RK’s circulatory system went the same route as a human’s, there would have been a pulse point in that location.

“The fuck is that?” Gavin demanded, poking insistently.

“The fuck is what?”

“That freckle,” Gavin said, sounding ridiculously affronted. “You didn’t have one there before.”

“I assure you I did. This body is an exact replica of my last one."

“Bullshit. That freckle was over here before.” Gavin’s finger trailed down and sideways, closer to the collar of RK’s uniform. Still accusatory.

“That’s impossible, Detective.”

“I know what I saw.” Gavin removed his hand all at once, crossing his arms over his chest. “You think I don’t know a freckle when I see one?”

“You’re being...” Might as well tell the truth. “... stupid.”

“Probably. So what? I liked the last body better.”

“How do you want me to fix that?”

“You can’t,” Gavin said, rolling his head back as if to crack his neck. A dramatic brat. “I’m just gonna have to learn to live with this one.”

“I’m sorry my injury upset you.”

“Whatever. Just don’t die again right when I’ve gotten used to body number two.”

The corners of RK’s mouth went tight, barely containing a smile. “I didn’t die, you know. I’m right here.”

“That’s what they say, anyway.”

“Don’t I seem like myself?”

“It’s different, motherfucker.”

“I’m not talking about the body. I’m talking about myself. I was re-uploaded entirely successfully.”

In fact, the only memories of RK’s that had been damaged in his unfortunate accident were the memories immediately preceding his body’s destruction. Rather embarrassingly, he couldn’t recall all the details of the case he and Gavin were running. He just knew he was thrown off the roof of a building. Unfortunate.

He still had an image in his head of Gavin’s prolific swearing, his partner chasing after him, dropping, chest flush with the roof, arm outstretched, but by then RK was already falling. Falling, falling, away from Gavin’s reaching hand. He couldn’t quite make out the expression on Gavin’s face, or else that memory also was damaged.

Then there was blackness.

And then in the next instant, he woke up in a lab, uploaded successfully into his new body. Wayward freckles included.

“Yeah yeah,” Gavin mumbled. He rummaged in his jacket pocket for another cigarette. _4.21 minutes_. He’d lasted longer than RK’s estimate.

Gavin always carried a lighter, but so did RK. It was simply wise to be prepared. RK beat him to it now, offering to light the new cigarette as soon as it was in Gavin’s mouth. Gavin let him.

Their bodies bowed toward each other comfortably, Gavin’s tense shoulders sagging as if in defeat. As Gavin took his first few puffs, RK didn’t pull away.

They had a ritual sometimes. Gavin read what RK wanted, and tilted his head up to open his mouth very close to RK’s lips. Exhale. RK opened his own mouth to receive the smoke.

He enjoyed the humidity of taking Gavin’s breath into him. The smoke filled his processors, made piques of programming stir and begin cataloging each of the toxins and flavor compounds. It wasn’t at all the effect cigarette inhalation had on humans. But for RK it was amusing. It was almost a game, his mind listing every ingredient of Gavin’s shitty menthols.

This time, Gavin also kissed the corner of his mouth. Just barely, in a way that might have been accidental, but RK knew it wasn’t.

“You androids make no goddamn sense,” Gavin murmured, cupping the back of RK’s neck absently.

RK allowed himself to smile now, smoke exiting his nose.

“You’re the one ingesting tar for a hobby,” he said. “You disgust me.”

Finally, Gavin laughed.

2.

They fucked sometimes. RK had no problem calling it fucking. That’s what it was.

His language was generally more colorful than that of his predecessor, RK800--or Connor as the particular model at the precinct was exclusively known. RK’s profanity was not the result of deviancy, however. He had simply adapted to the conditions of working alongside Gavin Reed. Humor, crudeness, and indeed meanness were all social cues well-suited for optimizing a working relationship with Gavin.

The fucking was the same sort of adaptation. The fact that RK enjoyed it was simply an added bonus.

He sat on the edge of Gavin’s bed, naked in the human sense, his synthetic skin purposefully warmed to a slightly above-average body temperature to simulate an afterglow. RK was a stickler for the details.

Behind him, Gavin was also naked and warm, curled around RK’s back like a cat, resting his forehead against RK’s pale hip and tracing patterns into the small of RK’s back with his thumb. Gavin was often quite handsy after fucking. RK palmed his head, lightly pulling his hair.

“Hrmm,” said Gavin, a low pleased rumble in his throat.

Just like a cat.

RK didn’t have any programming for sexual stimulation, nor the corresponding equipment, but he liked making Gavin writhe. Gavin, a greedy bastard, was happy to take as much as he could get in that department. Humans were fascinating. Even someone as sharply intelligent and egomaniacal as Gavin could be reduced to a whining mess if you just touched them in the right places.

Secretly, RK liked it best when he managed to coax Gavin near tears. He hadn’t made his partner actually cry yet during sex, but it was a private goal of his, carefully catalogued in the same internal file where he kept pictures of Gavin’s scars and the weird knobbiness of his knees and his sleeping face. Things he liked.

The RK900 model was allowed to create private goals and collections like these. It was a humanlike loophole designed as a way to discourage deviancy. Even now, in a time when deviants were coaxed out and normalized, RK remained fairly impenetrable. The breadth of choices his programming allowed made true freedom unnecessary and therefore, paradoxically, almost impossible to obtain by feats of stress or emotion. It fascinated him, again in the way that humans and their creations always fascinated him.

Humans made the nonsensical functional and even elegant.

“Hrmmmmmm,” Gavin said again, rubbing his face against RK’s thigh.

“Are you thinking about something?” RK asked, looking down at the top of Gavin’s head. He pressed his knuckle into the whorl of Gavin’s hair. Just because.

“How old are you, anyway?” Gavin asked.

“If you’re going by the new body, I suppose just a week or so.”

“I mean in general.” An annoyed huff.

“Almost two years.”

“And you still don’t have a name?”

“Considering I’m the only RK900 model that Cyberlife produced before control was passed on to the federal government, I see no reason to further clarify who I am. I am the RK900.”

“That’s a piss poor name.”

He pulled Gavin’s hair again, slowly but strongly enough to make Gavin look up and squint at him. RK smiled, showing teeth.

“You want to name me, don’t you?” he asked. “You think of me like your pet.”

“You’re not a _pet,_ ” Gavin said defensively. “The fuck do you take me for?”

“There have been countless studies on the human habit of personifying objects. Everything from ovens to houseplants. You feel compelled to give them a personality and a name, all the time.”

“What’re you even talking about? You think I’d be in bed with a houseplant?”

“I think you have naively high hopes in me, Gavin.”

“Fuck off,” Gavin spat. Ah. RK had made him angrier than intended. “Seriously, fuck you.”

RK loosened his grip on Gavin’s hair and stroked him soothingly.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’re not a pet,” Gavin repeated, glaring him down unwaveringly with a strange sort of courage. “You’re not a-- fuck. Just shut up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Load of bullshit.”

Truth be told, it wasn’t bullshit at all. RK couldn’t promise Gavin the type of humanity he might be hoping for here. It was painfully reflective of Gavin Reed’s personality to pursue a dynamic like this--searching for intimacy from a machine that could dispense a near substitute but never actual closeness. At least not closeness by human standards. Gavin would need to accept that someday.

RK went to make a mental note to talk about this with Gavin at another time, but to his surprise he found himself almost writing over a note that already existed in his files. He’d been putting this conversation off for awhile, it seemed. He didn’t know why.

Surely, it would do no good now, when Gavin was vulnerable. Literally bared.

“Do you really want to name me?” RK asked, more kindly.

“Nobody wants to name somebody who doesn’t want to be named,” Gavin said, somehow reasonable and petulant at the same time.

RK could tell he was disappointed.

RK shifted away from Gavin’s touch for a moment but only so he could lean over, spread his body over Gavin’s. Gavin grunted in response. RK nosed under Gavin’s ear and placed his lips to the stubble on his jaw.

“What would you name me?” he asked, before smearing kisses down the side of Gavin’s neck.

Gavin lay there still curled up, taking the approximation of affection, gray eyes staring ahead.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “A dog name, like Fido.”

RK wrapped his arms around him and hummed.

He was pleased by that answer.

3.

The next morning, Gavin arrived early to work as always and RK made a point of arriving slightly less early, despite the fact that they had actually spent the night together. Gavin was very protective of his reputation, and a detective having sexual relations with an undeviated android would not look good at all. Debates about android consent were gaining traction in the current political climate, and even Gavin himself had needed convincing that RK900’s unique programming did in fact provide choice without deviation. 

In public, RK called Gavin only “Detective Reed.”

Gavin was already at his terminal typing one handedly over a cup of coffee. RK took the time to go about his usual morning routine of tidying up the bullpen in small, unobtrusive ways. He preferred much more order than humans seemed capable of.

He circled the desks carrying a wastebasket, removing a used napkin here, a candy wrapper there.

“Good morning, RK900!” chirped Officer Chen, and then rained praises on him when he brought her a doughnut.

Officer Miller was not in yet, but RK uprighted a framed photograph of his daughter that had fallen near his keyboard.

He knew which desks to avoid. Some officers still fell on the side of increasingly radicalized anti-android sentiments, for example. Lieutenant Anderson, meanwhile, just hated being waited on by anybody, with the mysterious exception of Connor.

Once his rounds were done, RK returned the marginally fuller wastebasket to the breakroom, and found Connor there filling up the lieutenant’s coffee right on cue.

“Good morning, RK900,” he said.

“Good morning, Connor.”

They had the same voice. RK knew this was true, and indeed it caused occasional confusion in the workplace, but to him Connor sounded ever so slightly different than the voice in his own head. In a way he couldn’t explain.

“Is your new body working well for you?” Connor asked, mixing in some sugar with a stirring stick.

“There’s no reason it wouldn’t be.”

“Good point.” He smiled warmly, as if he knew something RK didn’t but it wasn’t important. “It’s good to have you back. You’d be surprised how much trash piled up while you were recovering."

“Oh I assure you, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.”

“A hazard of working with humans, I guess.”

“Nasty things.”

“Just terrible, all the time.”

But Connor’s smile had turned into a delighted little grin. It was no secret that he lived with Lieutenant Anderson outside of the precinct.

Connor had removed his LED about three months ago, and he looked human himself to the untrained eye. There was the tiniest hint of a scar where the LED once was, a flesh-colored divot at his temple, but you’d only notice it if you knew to look for it. He was dressed professionally for work as always, but his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. Anderson’s influence, no doubt.

He looked… happy.

Ever since RK had been assigned here, plopped into the workforce as a pesky government-sponsored android that simply would not deviate, Connor had always hovered at his elbow like a sort of fairy godmother. Back when Gavin was even more of an asshole, Connor had always been lurking right around the corner, eyes out for any excuse to get RK transferred to another partner. But RK never minded Gavin’s disagreeableness. He was a machine, of course he wouldn’t mind.

“Accidents aside, is this the sort of job that makes you happy?” Connor asked, as if reading his thoughts in some small way.

RK crossed his arms, a decidedly Gavinish gesture but without nearly the same offense. “Why do you ask, suddenly?”

“I was just wondering,” said Connor. “I care about it.”

“I’m not programmed for parameters like happiness,” RK reminded him. “I’m programmed to do assigned work. My skills are optimal for police work, so it fits, and my career here has gone smoothly thus far as a result.” He paused, LED spinning with an idle click. “But I do like it,” he said.

“Is Gavin behaving himself?”

“Of course not. But I like him also.”

“He was very upset when you were totaled,” Connor pointed out.

“Yes, I’ve noticed that too.” He frowned slightly, remembering some of Gavin’s more complex facial expressions from last night, watching RK with a strange sort of intensity during moments the android might not notice. But RK always noticed. “He really forgets that I’m a machine sometimes. It’s troublesome.”

Connor tilted his head consideringly. “I think it’s more that he blamed himself for your injury,” he said.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Aren’t all our humans?”

“He’s just hurting himself for no reason,” RK insisted.

“And you don’t like that, huh?”

RK just frowned.

A high whining noise arose, and Connor quickly went to switch off an electric kettle further down the counter. He poured the hot water into a waiting mug with a tea bag slung over the rim.

“Tea?” RK asked.

“I’m trying to get Hank to try healthier caffeine options,” Connor said. He held up both the coffee and the tea, one in each hand, with a goofy sort of cheerfulness. “He agreed to a taste test.”

Maybe RK should try that with Gavin. Probably wouldn’t work without blackmail.

He fell into step at Connor’s side, wanting to ask something but not sure what the question even was until it had already fallen out of his mouth.

“Were _you_ upset when I was totaled, Connor?”

Connor paused in the doorway to look at him.

“Yes,” he said simply.

How was RK supposed to react to such an illogical display of deviancy? He nodded, a bit at a loss.

“Thank you,” he said. “I understand you’re looking out for me.”

4.

As RK and Connor made their way back toward the desks, they walked into a swell of voices all the sudden.

The bullpen was in an uproar.

Detective Johnson (42, male, white, in the DPD for 7 years) was shouting in front of Gavin’s desk, his face an impressive shade of red. Officer Miller had arrived just in time to watch on warily, while Lieutenant Anderson hovered above his own chair across the room, as if unsure whether to sit or to intervene.

“You busted my informant you goddamn unprofessional piece of _shit_ ,” was about where Johnson’s tirade was at.

Gavin was just lounging at his terminal, his knee bouncing against his desk. He was tracing his lower lip with his thumb and watching Johnson with fiendish glee.

Ah yes. Gavin was an asshole and people hated him.

“I’m talking to you, prick,” Johnson spat.

“And I’m _not_ talking to _you_ ,” said Gavin. Oh, he was very pleased with that one. He spun his chair in a slow half-circle and _lounged more_. “That’s a fuckin’ pickle innit.”

“Calm down,” Anderson said warningly, in the way of someone who really had no stakes in whoever might get punched in the face here but would prefer a quiet workplace.

Johnson did not calm down. He shoved his palms against the plexiglass partition above Gavin’s desk, making it rattle and a few of Gavin’s spartan post-it notes rain to the floor.

In one smooth motion, Gavin rolled himself upright, both feet planting themselves on the ground. His grin was absolutely wicked. RK knew that look was ready, even thirsty, for violence. RK also knew, better than most, that the sunken shadows under Gavin’s eyes were because he had not slept well last night. There was something frayed at the edges of his arrogance, a dangerous something that was exactly what made him such a dirty fighter.

“You know that bastard’s had one foot in jail for years,” Gavin said. “You just like the excuse to bitch at me, because bitching at me’s your specialty these days. How about it, _Mitchell_? You gonna just keep yapping like a mad chihuahua or are you gonna actually man up and hit me for once?”

“ _Reed_ ,” said Anderson. Officer Chen stood from her desk and Officer Miller took a few steps forward.

Gavin shouted over their concern. “Go on, big guy, hit me!”

Connor shifted as well, but RK stopped him with a firm hand on his arm. Connor was still carrying two mugs, which would only wind up on the floor.

As for RK himself…

He had a few choices, the diagnostics of which slid across his vision.

Gavin was in no real danger, but a scuffle was surely imminent. Chen and Miller were poised to leap in before anything got too extreme. RK of course could end the altercation even sooner with some expert maneuvers.

But he was not going to.

The unique setup of the RK900’s programming was that he was not locked in to specific orders or rules. Again, a failsafe against deviancy. His objective was simply to do his assigned job, and Cyberlife had entrusted his unparalleled logic to determine better than any human what the best parameters were for adhering to this task.

Yes, RK’s job involved maintaining a civil workplace, but he had already decided that civility was not the priority here in terms of upkeeping his partnership with Gavin Reed.

An important piece of information sat catalogued in his files:

Detective Johnson was an ex **[ ? ]** member of the Anti Android League. He continued to be one of the most hostile people toward RK and Connor in the office.

For that reason, Gavin _needed_ to take this fight.

It wasn’t so long ago that Gavin and Johnson had been something like comrades. Gavin had never had friends per se, not with his attitude, but mutual hatred for androids had at least gained him the respect of certain cliques around the precinct.

Nobody had expected Gavin to leave that group. Abruptly, and without fanfare. RK had never pressed for an explanation, although as Gavin’s assigned partner he had born witness to a lot more of that inner crisis than others had any concept of. He’d seen the long agonizing drag of it hidden behind Gavin’s fatigue. To most it just looked like Gavin stopped associating with anti android circles cold turkey, a few months after the Revolution. As if on a whim.

Johnson and others weren’t pleased by the development. They immediately targeted Gavin as a turncoat, and seemingly random fights like this weren’t uncommon. Gavin must have known this would happen. He’d effectively exiled himself, a traitor to his earlier posse of android haters and yet also too much of a recovering bastard to have the respect of anyone who had been pro android all along. He was more alone than ever before.

But as always, Gavin would never accept sympathy for such a thing. He’d waltzed right into this no-man’s land with the same cocksure impudence he had for everything else.

RK liked that about him.

“Hit me, motherfu--” Gavin started, but he was interrupted by Johnson finally taking him up on the offer.

Johnson sidestepped the desk in one frenzied lunge and fisted the front of Gavin’s jacket. He might have yanked Gavin to his feet if Gavin hadn’t already sprung up like a rocket and hurtled them both against the wall.

“Fuck you, assholes!” said Anderson, finally rising with livid disbelief. Chen and Miller were crossing the room immediately while Gavin and Johnson grappled with one another, hands balling in shirt fronts, Gavin pulling at Johnson’s hair like the little brat he always was in a fight. His grin was downright face-splitting, and Johnson spun him bodily into the desk.

He smacked Gavin under the chin, making Gavin bite his own lip. There was blood. RK’s LED whirred briefly.

Then Gavin kneed Johnson in the gut and went to town, both men falling to the floor. Gavin was whaling into him, and in the next split second Chen and Miller arrived to tackle them both.

RK didn’t budge, only watched.

He had complete confidence that Gavin could handle this himself. And besides, there was a certain… _thrill_ in watching Gavin Reed tear out his own bizarre version of honor with his fists.

Connor respected RK’s decision and stayed put as well, but he did shoot his fellow android a small frown.

The humans had it covered, as predicted.

They dragged the two men to their feet, and Miller hustled Johnson over to his desk across the room. Johnson’s hair was a mess and his tie had been pulled loose, but he would be fine. Gavin, leaning against Chen, was still smiling dazedly, blood dripping down his chin from a cut lip. He also would be fine.

“You idiots are lucky Jeff isn’t in yet,” Anderson snapped. “Take your hormonal teenage angst outside next time, this is a fucking police station.”

He might have gone further into a lecture, except now he was blinking down perplexedly at the two mugs Connor had just offered him.

Johnson slumped into his chair with a huff, and Miller simply made a thin-lipped _alright then_ face before returning to his own work station. Chen actually patted Gavin on the back, quickly so no one would see.

Gavin did not have friends, but an unexpected result of his recent social exile was that Officer Chen had grown to like him more. She had never been in with the Anti Android League herself but her opinions had veered towards callous before the Revolution. Her shift into fairly liberal pro android politics now had mirrored Gavin’s own self-improvement, and their previous penchant for mean gossip had recently developed into something closer to actual friendship. It seemed that once they both dropped their bitterness, they were forced to find things they actually had in common.

Officer Miller was one of the few who appreciated Gavin’s change as well. He regarded the detective with much less tired resignation now and even, at times, with genuine cheer. If Gavin was ever going to earn friends of actual substance, these two were prime candidates.

RK suspected both of them had been privately rooting for Gavin in this exchange, which pleased him immensely.

For his part, he went to sit at his desk, the one opposite Gavin’s, as if nothing had even happened.

He and Gavin sank into their chairs at about the same time, almost comically on cue.

“Look at you,” RK chided.

He passed Gavin a Kleenex over their desk partition. Gavin accepted it with another grin, and dabbed blood off his front teeth.

RK very much wanted to kiss him, but of course he would not.

Instead he settled into his own work, turning on his computer. He could almost feel the glare of Johnson across the room, no doubt shooting a vicious look at RK’s back.

Gavin caught the bastard’s eye and sent him a cocky wink.

Well. Something like a wink, anyway.

RK smiled to himself.

5.

The rest of the day went by aggressively normally, much of RK and Gavin’s case consisting of paperwork and research. They were still on the same case that had resulted in RK’s accident. The men they lost in that rooftop chase had been their only leads into a new, particularly unstable strand of Red Ice, and now they were left picking at scraps again. Gavin had matter-of-factly filled in the details of RK’s damaged memory, without presumption or condescension. 

At about 9:30 pm, RK packed up the drug samples he’d been going over in the lab and headed back to the bullpen. The corridors of the precinct were dimmed, most of the personnel already home for the night. There was a certain cool silence to the office at this hour. RK’s shoes clicked pleasingly on the floor.

The bullpen was also dark and empty, although a couple of the computers were still on, including Lieutenant Anderson’s, offering their unattended glow to the night. Gavin was the only person present, standing over his desk but still typing, his chair shoved against the wall. He hated sitting for too long, but loved his work.

He always arrived early, and always left late.

RK had completed his tasks for the day, but a small alert appeared in the corner of his vision nonetheless. It just said **[ Gavin ]**.

In the RK900 model’s unique collection of freedoms, it could also write its own minor programs or adjust existing features, so long as they helped with assignments and did not inhibit overall function. RK had added this generalized alert: _Gavin_ , nothing more, nothing less. It served a variety of nuanced purposes in their partnership, but more than anything it just meant exactly what it said.

_I would like to be with Gavin right now._

He crossed the room to Gavin’s desk and stood behind him, running a quiet scan of his partner’s back.

Stress level: 43%. Fairly normal for Gavin. He had last eaten at approximately 5pm. A protein bar, RK remembered. He had no egregious injuries from the morning fight. The split in his lip had scabbed over to a dot of caked-on blood at the corner of his mouth.

RK focused on the way the small hairs curled on the back of Gavin’s neck, above the hood of his jacket. This had nothing to do with his biometrics, of course.

Without looking up, Gavin asked, “What’s the problem, Nines?”

It was an illogical nickname. RK’s model number only had one nine. But such was the nature of Gavin’s creativity.

“I wanted to thank you for defending my honor earlier,” RK said, dripping irony.

Gavin barked an appreciative laugh.

“You’re always such a damsel, you know?” he said. But he glanced over his shoulder with unguarded fondness, a certain settled warmth in his eyes.

RK liked these moments in the dark when Gavin was tired enough to be soft.

“It’s 9:36,” RK added.

“Shit, already?”

“It came at the same pace it always does, I promise.”

Gavin turned to him fully, perching his ass on the edge of his desk. “I could go for the world’s greasiest, nastiest pizza right now.”

“Disgusting.”

“That’s the whole point.”

They were both smiling, Gavin in that crooked way that always looked oddly surprised, as if a part of him could never quite believe he had a reason to be smiling.

_Would you ever take a punch for me specifically, Gavin?_ RK felt he knew the answer. Gavin loved a good fight, after all. He’d probably eat RK’s own fist with the same enthusiasm as that pizza if given the chance. But RK had no desire to punch Gavin. Not ever, actually.

Instead, he was again experiencing the insistent urge to kiss him. That was becoming a nuisance.

Gavin’s smile fell suddenly. Just as crookedly, like uneven blinds.

“Hey tiger, what's wrong with your dial?” he asked.

“My LED?”

“Yeah it's blinking in and out like crazy.”

RK frowned. That was impossible. He was under no great stress, his own metrics said that his LED was currently a stable blue, and he couldn't feel it spinning either. Turning off and on wasn't something it even _did_. He was about to explain this to Gavin when a large diagnostic message scrawled across his screen.

**[ CRITICAL SOFTWARE ERROR: INITIATING SHUTDOWN . . . ]**

RK had just long enough to say “Oh,” before he fell in a heap to the floor.


End file.
